► How does city space influence our behaviors in ways that might not even be perceptible? This dissertation examines Paris’s nineteenth-century urban upheaval in the works…
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▼ How does city space influence our behaviors in ways that might not even be perceptible? This dissertation examines Paris’s nineteenth-century urban upheaval in the works of Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola. Haussmann’s comprehensive redesign of the French capital obliterated the narrow street patterns of medieval Paris, replacing them with wide boulevards lined with boutiques. This research shows how this radical transformation influences individuals’ inclinations.
This interdisciplinary research synthesizes various representations of Paris together as a multidimensional mosaic to see what they reveal about the city and about us. This work aims to help us understand, as David Harvey says, “what the city was” and also helps us understand the modern city today and “what it could become.” This dissertation coincides with a number of new theoretical studies in architecture that aim to help us create new rapports with our cities.
My argument is that the nineteenth-century Frenchliterature of this period portrays the urban space as a series of images to be visually and commercially consumed, a consumption that nourishes changes in the way individuals experience their daily lives and perceive their environment. By closely examining how these authors stress the dominance of the visual spectacle, this dissertation sheds new light on modernity’s immersion in the culture of the image, in which we even more today rely on images to experience the world and to interpret our daily lives. I use recent cultural and urban theories to show that the new open urban environment depicted in these texts created a milieu that encouraged individuals to display their personal lives before a quasi-invisible public. Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola suggest that the dominance of commercial images in Paris brings with it a loss of reality. As a consequence, this world of illusion prompts individuals to engage in voyeuristic activities in an effort to find truth and reality. Ultimately, this research contributes to a broader understanding of our attraction to voyeurism and exhibitionism by linking the source of that attraction to nineteenth-century culture, particularly that of Paris as Walter Benjamin’s “capital of the nineteenth century.”

► Even though Sade’s reputation as an “athée exacerbé”(1) seems to dominate the critics, this dissertation argues that his atheism is not as obvious as…
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▼ Even though Sade’s reputation as an “athée exacerbé”(1) seems to dominate the critics, this dissertation argues that his atheism is not as obvious as it seems. Through an analysis of the correlation between language and religion in the marquis’ work, this study demonstrates that it is through his mistrust of language that Sade presents his ideas. While his libertines seem to profess the superiority of atheism, their discourse is undermined by their rhetoric. Through the use of sophisms, Sade is able to present the dispute between philosophers and apologists, which dominated the second half of the XVIII century, as sterile. The presentation of the libertines’ materialist ideas is equally problematic since the moral relativism they express is incompatible with the foundation of the Enlightenment’s ethical values. Moreover, Sade’s libertine novels profess the refusal of any acknowledgment of an ethic based solely on men, while his pessimism towards human nature puts him closer to the apologists. By undermining the foundations of any secular ethic, Sade places himself against both philosophers and apologists who, for once, agreed on the idea that virtue was the truest way to happiness. Sade’s novels therefore undermine both apologists and philosophers’ ideas by showing their contradictions. By presenting all of the prevailing religious thoughts of his time, Sade multiplies them in order to reduce them to binary notions that ultimately cancel each other out. Sade uses atheism to underscore the contradictions of his time. He presents a world in which all reference points have disappeared and in which every discourse seems to be a deception waiting to be exposed. Confronted with the unequivocal representations of both the philosophers and the apologists, whether triumphant or disparaging, Sade proves that one needs to push back with skepticism. The discourse on religion in Sade’s work could therefore be summed-up by the dying man: “You compose, you construct, you dream, you magnify and complicate; I sift, I simplify. You accumulate errors, pile one atop the other; I combat them all”(2).

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The stereotypical figure of the femme fatale as irresistible seductress, who inevitably brings about death, is well known. This figure is nevertheless strangely…
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ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The stereotypical figure of the femme fatale as irresistible seductress, who inevitably brings about death, is well
known. This figure is nevertheless strangely absent from Afrikaans literature. This is what makes the appearance
of the character of Nicolette in André Brink’s novel, The Ambassador (1963), so remarkable. Not only is she a
complex femme fatale, she also adds a new dimension to the cliché. The striking similarities between Nicolette
and Kathe, the female protagonist in Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel Jules et Jim (1953), justify a comparative study
between these two novels. Although both of them bring about death, it seems that the presence of these femme
fatale characters has positive rather than negative consequences. Contrary to the stereotypical evil temptress,
Nicolette and Kathe are more natural, spontaneous and unpredictable – apparently free from the constricting
qualities of the bloodthirsty femme fatale. In this comparative study, the image of the femme fatale is
investigated through the close examination of its role and function in Jules et Jim and The Ambassador. By
examining the philosopher René Girard’s theories on mimetic desire, violence and sacrifice as well as Georges
Bataille’s ideas on eroticism and death, the nature of the femme fatale in these two novels is analysed in order to
determine to what extent the image of the femme fatale as negative archetype could be reconsidered.

▼French actresses have exerted an endless fascination
on film audiences worldwide. Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve,
Juliette Binoche, and, more recently, Amelie star Audrey Tautou
epitomize the lasting appeal of the glamorous French star system,
inviting a critical exploration of their prominent star images and
of the bridges of desire that connect them to national and global
audiences. French female stars cross the boundaries of popular and
auteur cinema, and their mythical star text is refracted across
both material and discursive practices, pointing to their status as
French cinema icons, national treasures, and objects of
consumption. On the one hand, French female stardom is represented
as an elusive essence, a self-made myth inspired by a reputable
tradition of cinematic and artistic excellence, its allure residing
in the infamous je ne sais quoi that refuses easy consumption. On
the other hand, stars as icons of femininity are the objects of an
intense scrutiny that invites consumption through various
practices, as the glamorous French actresses are exclusively
faithful to the national industries of tourism, perfume, cosmetics,
and fashion. My research also reveals that the various cultural
products related to French female stars initiate a dynamic and
visionary mode of transnational cultural exchanges. Contrary to a
French cultural tradition turned inward to protect its national
authenticity, the cultural products related to French female stars
are open to export their Frenchness in a global market.
Consequently, despite the construction of French cinema split
between a commercial and an art sector with less popular appeal,
female stars contribute to its perpetuation as art, industry, and
commerce, providing a vital link in the negotiations between
feminine identities, cinema, nation, and (inter)national
consumption.
Advisors/Committee Members: Mayne, Judith (Advisor).

Gray, F. C. (2015). Four visions of Tahiti in twentieth century French literature : Gauguin, Segalen, Chadourne, t'Serstevens. (Thesis). University of Hawaii. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10125/35997

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Gray FC. Four visions of Tahiti in twentieth century French literature : Gauguin, Segalen, Chadourne, t'Serstevens. [Internet] [Thesis]. University of Hawaii; 2015. [cited 2019 May 25].
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/35997.

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Council of Science Editors:

Gray FC. Four visions of Tahiti in twentieth century French literature : Gauguin, Segalen, Chadourne, t'Serstevens. [Thesis]. University of Hawaii; 2015. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/35997

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

► The study examines unpublished writings and literary works which belong mostly either to novelistic or autobiographical genre. The study is divided into three parts: after…
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▼ The study examines unpublished writings and literary works which belong mostly either to novelistic or autobiographical genre. The study is divided into three parts: after the introduction, a Preamble presents the theoretical framework used in the study. The other two parts deal with break-up narratives, and, to a lesser extent, with Dear John Letters . The introduction presents the research questions and asks whether it is possible to find a typology and a rhetoric in the way leaving someone is expressed. The central notion of falling out of love in the Western tradition is defined, connected with passion, adulterous love and the image of impossible love. In this context, the dominant narrative is the one which describes the suffering of the one left more than the one leaving. The choice of texts, both among published and unpublished writings, is intended to give the possibility to compare fiction and non-fiction, ordinary writings and literary writings, and to find common features between them, which, if proved true, would confirm that there is a specific way to write about break-up and to write a break-up letter.
The frames of references for the study, presented in the Preamble, are numerous: rhetorics and pragmatics, linguistics, and the theory of enunciation. Furthermore, some approaches are also based on sociology and psychology.
The part concerning the analysis of break-up narratives shows that among the published break-up narratives, the difference between fictional and non-fictional writings is clear in the older texts, but more complex in the contemporary literature. The conclusion is that a hybrid status can be observed, at the border between fiction and non-fiction. Most of the texts are autobiographical without being called so. The notion of self-fiction, however convenient a label it may be, is not relevant. The genre description appearing on the front page or as a subtitle only reflects how frequently the novel genre is alluded to, which can be interpreted in different ways. Only one thing is common to all the texts: they are all written in the first person singular.
Many break-up narratives have fragmentary structure, with letters and diaries as components. Pictures also play an important role in certain texts. The structure of the narratives, their openings and closings, the fact that they are addressing someone, and the close link between letter and diary is examined. Letters and diaries are shown to be the most appropriate forms when dealing with break-up, they are the most commonly used forms.
The last part of the study focuses on the examination of break-up letters. The study shows their formal characteristics, noting how brief the letters frequently are, and also how contradictory too, because writing to someone, the mere act of writing a letter, tends to make people closer, when, at the same time, the content of the letter is meant to express distance. The examples in this part of the study come mainly from the unpublished writings. Choosing to break up by writing a letter leads…

► In this qualitative case study, intersectionality of strategies for teaching in an inclusive classroom with students with disabilities and strategies for teaching the Common…
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▼ In this qualitative case study, intersectionality of strategies for teaching in an inclusive classroom with students with disabilities and strategies for teaching the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will be explored. A gap in the literature demonstrated a need for further research in the area of CCSS for students with disabilities and more particularly how students in an inclusive program access CCSS. In order to research the possible intersectionality of CCSS and inclusion of students with disabilities in education the use of qualitative case study methodology through the analysis of interviews, observations, and reflective memos took place. An a priori theme development approach was used. Findings suggest five recommendations for successful implementation of CCSS in inclusive classrooms: (1) build in collaboration time for all stakeholders; (2) use well-trained teachers in inclusive models; (3) find the correct level of support; (4) conduct professional development within other district trainings and; (5) provide a consultation and coaching model. Recommendations for future research are included.

This dissertation, Jeux et enjeux de la traduction du théâtre hétérolingue franco-canadien (1991-2013) [Translation at Play in French-English Theatre in Canada (1991-2013)], explores language and performance games inherent to bilingual theatre from francophone theatres in Western Canada, Ontario and Acadie, before following these games on the road as they are translated for audience members who don’t have an equal grasp on French and English. Using what I call “playful translation,” authors, translators, directors and actors collaborate to stage intricate games of inclusion and exclusion of audience members along linguistic lines. These theatre practitioners do not ignore language asymmetries in Canada but play upon and against the power dynamics that enable them. Spectators without access to both languages are made aware that they don’t understand parts of the performance because they aren’t supposed to; in many cases, they are the target of the jokes and games played by bilingual theatre artists. This dissertation exposes many of these jokes at the expense of spectators who don’t understand both French and English, as bilingual theatre moves, in partial translation, towards Canada’s major theatre centres in English (Toronto) and in French (Montréal). It takes these two centres as vantage points, but also as targets for the playful attacks launched by francophone theatres through language and performance. Performance practices from Canada’s different francophone spaces are taken into account: shows from Western Canada (Sex, lies et les Franco-Manitobains, Scapin!), Ontario (Le Rêve totalitaire de dieu l’amibe, L’Homme invisible/The Invisible Man) and Acadie (Empreintes, Les Trois exils de Christian E.) are analyzed in their production spaces and in the spaces toward which they travel. Using performance analysis, I verify two hypotheses: the first is that a passage to playful heterolingualism occurs in the 1990s in Canada’s francophone theatres; the second, that such playfulness can be transformed as to allow heterolingual theatre practices to circulate towards Canada’s major theatre centres. Using a comparative approach, I focus on what defines each of these practices, as well as on what they share. By emphasizing the playfulness of bilingual theatre, this dissertation challenges and refines previous research on the serious issues around bilingual theatre in Canada. It takes as its entry point and its final destination an enlarged conception of translation that includes creative practices both anchored in their contexts and conducive to the flow of theatre across regional boundaries. This dissertation calls out to us through diverse modes of translation, inviting us to attend in differential and deferential ways to the games of francophone theatre in Canada.

Writers of various origins have always written in Quebec. Since 1987, they have been recognized and coined the term migrant writers. The emergence, designation and…
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Writers of various origins have always written in Quebec. Since 1987, they have been recognized and coined the term migrant writers. The emergence, designation and promotion of migrant writings echo the interculturalist political discourse advocating openness towards others and an integration of immigrants respectful of their cultural identity. In various official documents, the Quebec government has established a diversity management policy based upon contributions from cultural communities in Quebec and the promotion of positive attitudes towards immigration and cultural diversity. After some study of Quebecois literary anthologies published at Cegep level between 1994 and 2008, one recognizes that these pedagogical instruments support this official policy and present migrant writings as literature of immigrants whose primary interest remains the testimony of a néo-québécoise or a foreigner's reality. Recognition of the migrant literature highlights the political transformation of Quebec society via intercultural education and the development of social consensus with respect to pluralism. The literary and scholarly perspective on migrant writings can be well understood when it is related to the Quebec political view of immigration from which it borrows its words and values.

The creative writing portion of this thesis is a pastiche of the writings of 17th century memorialist and historian François Timoléon de Choisy. The cross-dressing…
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The creative writing portion of this thesis is a pastiche of the writings of 17th century memorialist and historian François Timoléon de Choisy. The cross-dressing adventures he lived as a young man were published as the Mémoires de l'abbé de Choisy habillé en femme and the pastiche presented here constitutes a "lost" chapter that recounts an episode referred to in the Mémoires.

The critical aspect of this thesis concerns the three versions of Gabrielle Roy's last manuscript: Le temps qui m'a manqué. The Canadian novelist's last autobiographic text is analysed from both a stylistic and a genetic perspective and considers the variations from one manuscript to the next as well as those passages left unchanged.

In both cases, the exploration of the authors' individual styles is an attempt to answer a question integral to our own writing practice: how does one create credible fiction from realities that are not always believable?

Using the work of sociologist Nathalie Heinich on the intrinsic relationship between singularity and collectivity in modern artistic practices as a starting point, we would…
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Using the work of sociologist Nathalie Heinich on the intrinsic relationship between singularity and collectivity in modern artistic practices as a starting point, we would like to illustrate how the movement within those two poles affected the exotic group, present on the Quebec literary scene in the 1910s. The four poets who comprised that group adopted a similar posture in public, belonged to the same social circles and shared a similar background of literary references, influences and topoï. However, they differed from one another by their collections of poem, each unique in tone and construction. Neither a literary school nor a movement, the exotic group cannot be defined by traditional categories. The notion of « collective posture », developed by Anthony Glinoer, seems to be the most adequate denomination for the group's endeavours. To analyse the exotic identity, we will consider both their social behaviour and their writings. We will also examine with the aid of literary history books and works of fiction how the exotic have been depicted throughout the XXth century.

The poetry of Gérald Leblanc puts forward the idea of a cosmopolitan Acadian society that manifests itself in the small city of Moncton. While cosmopolitanism…
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The poetry of Gérald Leblanc puts forward the idea of a cosmopolitan Acadian society that manifests itself in the small city of Moncton. While cosmopolitanism is generally attributed to large cities, Michael Cronin believes that other forms of cosmopolitanism are possible which function on a smaller scale. His concept of micro-cosmopolitanism highlights the existence of diversity at all scales (large and small). Clint Bruce establishes a link between micro-cosmopolitanism and the themes of language and the city of Moncton in the poetry of Leblanc. My thesis starts from there to explore the works of Gérald Leblanc through selected themes: the carnal aspect, the counter-culture and the legitimization of the vernacular (Chiac). We begin by looking at the poet's movement towards the Other. We then see that, without denying his attachment to the Other, Leblanc returns to the Self: a modern and contemporary Acadian culture already diversified and full of traces of the Other.

In the first section of this Master's thesis, we study the concept of sacred, more precisely the phenomenon of "re-enchantment" at work in Bob (2008),…
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In the first section of this Master's thesis, we study the concept of sacred, more precisely the phenomenon of "re-enchantment" at work in Bob (2008), a theatre play by René-Daniel Dubois. Through an analysis of religious patterns, discourse segments related to the sacred, and of the mise en abyme of Lorenzaccio (1834), a romantic drama written by Alfred de Musset, we demonstrate that the romantic discourse of characters Madame Fryers and Lorenzo (played by Bob) exerts a salutary influence on both the discourse and the life of the two male protagonists, and thus creates a form of "re-enchantment" in the play.The second section presents a creative piece of writing, a short story made of about twenty "fragments/mirrors" reflecting the life of a pianist named Ludvig, from the first note to the last fermata. On top of describing an important event that occurred in his childhood during a piano lesson, and the consequences of the latter on the rest of his existence, the character reveals, through a three-voice polyphony, his relation to music, to Art, and to the world.The link between the two parts of this Master's thesis is Dubois' theatre play itself, which has served as a foundation to the research section, and as a source of inspiration (among others) for the short story. Indeed, the latter borrows from the drama themes such as the gulf between the inside and the outside worlds and the multiple identities of the contemporary individual, and integrates the play by the means of the mise en abyme. Finally, Bob et Ludvig et moi (1-2-3) are linked by the redemptive value given to Art, which plays in both works an important, perhaps even a sacred role.

The objective of this thesis is to examine Prochain épisode through the prism of anti-colonialist ideology as presented by Hubert Aquin in his essays, most…
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The objective of this thesis is to examine Prochain épisode through the prism of anti-colonialist ideology as presented by Hubert Aquin in his essays, most notably "La fatigue culturelle du Canada français" and "Profession : Écrivain". To this end, the characteristics shared by both the novel and its particular literary context are examined; in this case, the novel from 1960s Quebec as well as the French " Nouveau Roman " and the narrative defined by Dominique Rabaté in Vers une littérature de l'épuisement. Once the specificities of Prochain épisode have been elucidated, the ideology defended by Aquin during the writing of his novel is delineated through a review of his essays. This review is informed by both the conceptual heritage of Aimé Césaire as well as Aquin's opposition to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's reasoning. Finally, the integration of this ideology within the novel, especially in its symbols, is explained in order to highlight the work's potential meaning from such a perspective.

The following Master's thesis is divided in two parts. The first is a piece of fiction: it tells the story of a little girl who,…
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The following Master's thesis is divided in two parts. The first is a piece of fiction: it tells the story of a little girl who, upon beginning to speak, expresses herself in a language other than the one spoken in her city. This language, Arabic, is that of her "real" father, a nomadic mailman. This little girl, having been displaced from birth, will ultimately provoke the ruin of the city, which will destroy itself from within. The Arabic tongue is, in this text, an active element of the story: when denied, it becomes the very instrument of the city's destruction. The second part focuses on the role of multilingualism in Abla Farhoud's Le fou d'Omar. Sherry Simon's theories on multilingualism, those of Régine Robin on the notion of mother tongue and of Simon Harel on otherness and the "migrant experience" shed some light on the role of diverse languages and their use by narrators in the novel. These uses are seen as symptomatic of the way each narrator integrates himself into his society. We will see that language, like identity, is always problematic and can only situate itself in in-between-ness.

Not only is the writer a human being made of flesh and blood, he is also, since Romantism, a public character with his own fictions,…
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Not only is the writer a human being made of flesh and blood, he is also, since Romantism, a public character with his own fictions, costumes, poses and mannerism, his own looks and posture.

This is what this Master's thesis, which deals with Gaston Miron, aims to demonstrate by studying the singular character constructed by the poet and critics alike between 1953 (year of Miron's first publication, Deux sangs, published by l'Hexagone) and 2008 (year of publication of the musical album Douze homes rapaillés chantent Gaston Miron). This study will contribute to the understanding of the construction of his posture and of the edification of his legend. We will try to show how his attitude shaped his literary personality, his writer's identity and participated in creating his specificity within Quebec's literary society.

Most of the studies about the writer's posture analyze autobiographical texts. We will broaden such a corpus by also studying Miron's poems, numerous articles and tributes to the poet, an essay, a documentary, as well as a musical album which features some of Miron's poems sung by various artists. These documents will enable us to study certain aspects that have so far not been taken into account in the studies regarding the author's posture, in particular the role played by peers, media and commentators of Miron's work in the construction of his posture, and the appropriation of Miron's legend after his death by this same community.

This panorama of French Canadian literature between 1846 and 1938, a century quite homogenous around the "roman du terroir", allows some conclusions about the dominant…
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This panorama of French Canadian literature between 1846 and 1938, a century quite homogenous around the "roman du terroir", allows some conclusions about the dominant representations of nature of this period. Between the rural novels, influenced by the dominant ideologies that are "agriculturism", nationalism and Catholicism, along with other novels more aligned with American values, and other writings that are moving away from those ideologies, it is possible to see a tendency, an oscillation rather than a straight line, but an amplifying oscillation, from representations of a nature that can be possessed to representations of a nature that cannot be possessed. In other words, representations change from a nature seen as a commodity (private or national property, source of wealth) to a nature perceived as a place where to find identity, both French Canadian and American (from the Americas), and to find spirituality.

This doctoral thesis is dedicated to the study of the forms of community and filiations in the works of Michel Beaulieu (1941-1985) and Gilbert Langevin…
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This doctoral thesis is dedicated to the study of the forms of community and filiations in the works of Michel Beaulieu (1941-1985) and Gilbert Langevin (1938-1995). Immediately after the "poétique du pays" and at the same time as the "new writing" and "counter culture" movements, these two Quebec poets were wary of traditional forms of community (People, Nation, any grouping based on a unitarian conception). Important figures of the literary environment since the sixties, with ties to many different poetic movements, Beaulieu and Langevin remain determinedly faithful in their pursuit of a personal writing. This thesis aims at bringing to light the conception of community peculiar to their poetics, which is situated outside oppositions such as respect for tradition vs. a break/rupture with the past or open disapproval vs. narrow-minded adherence. The hypothesis guiding this project is that these works try to express a "hollow" community. Indeed, the association to a collective project aiming towards a definite purpose — political or poetic —, is improbable for them and their writings demonstrate more loss than union, more dispersal than assemblage ; their verses sound the knell of groupings, gatherings, assemblies. For these poets, the real filiation is based not on what people share but rather on what they lack. Thus the common world in their poetry is linked to a personal event (a memory, an encounter, a fleeting moment of solidarity, etc.) and is based on a "social condition" and not on a common project or allegiance to a group or ideology. This thesis situates Beaulieu and Langevin, who have been neglected by criticism, in the literary context of the period and seeks to reveal and describe a "politics of writing" (J. Rancière) and to delineate the configurations of community inscribed in the very syntax of their work and elaborated in their poetics.

This thesis examines the role of the grotesque in Victor-Lévy Beaulieu's La Grande Tribu : c'est la faute à Papineau. It aims to show how…
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This thesis examines the role of the grotesque in Victor-Lévy Beaulieu's La Grande Tribu : c'est la faute à Papineau. It aims to show how the writer's primary aesthetics offers a new conception of Quebec's national past and society that subverts the initial project of the text and its original model, the epic. The hypothesis underlying this study is that the grotesque – through improbable mixings, hybridization, and metamorphosis – enables Lévy-Beaulieu to reflect on the ways the world has changed and to put the future of a community into words. The first chapter gives an overview of the main theories on the grotesque in order to turn its defining characteristics into concrete analysis tools. In this respect, the works of Mikhail Bakhtine, Wolfgang Kayser and Rémi Astruc are closely analyzed to provide the theoretical framework of this study. The second chapter deals with the various occurrences of the grotesque in La Grande Tribu in order to see how they participate – with an emphasis on the representation of the ways the body and language mutate – in shifting the plot into another reality altogether. Finally, the last chapter focuses on the specific relationship between time and historical continuity in the text. Under the influence of the "grotesque time", which minimizes the distance between past and present, La Grand Tribu drifts into an entropic temporality in which memory rules the characters' fate and complicates the plot by harking back to and repeating the past.

This thesis explores the new role that Quebec literature textbooks and anthologies play following the Robillard education reform in 1993. In order to do so,…
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This thesis explores the new role that Quebec literature textbooks and anthologies play following the Robillard education reform in 1993. In order to do so, we adopted a hybrid methodology that combines the concepts from the literary institution theory, the sociology of books and publishing, and from the reception theory.Following a brief reminder of the definition of literary anthology , we present the reform's main guidelines concerning the teaching of Quebec literature. We then propose a study of its key issues, before briefly presenting our two studied works. A macro analysis of the textbooks, their structure and the introductions to the authors precedes the exposition of the didactic presentation of the selected literary works. This part of the memoir is then dedicated to the micro analysis of the two major works whose literary categorisation remains problematic; Ringuet's novel Trente Arpents, and Alfred DesRochers' poetry collection À l'Ombre de l'Orford. We are led to observe that the institutional influence mainly leads to the valorisation of textbooks proposing a structuralist view of literature, in which a quick categorisation of the works allows little room for nuances. This then leads us to identify the tensions inherent to didactic literary works linked to the reform, namely the tensions between- the complex nature of literature and the technical, normative and biased approach advised by the reform;- the desire to offer an exhaustive historical overview of literature versus an intensified focus put on works written in the second part of the 20th century, as required by the new program.At the end of this study, we are called to redefine both the anthology and the textbook. This leads us to distinguish in terms of their respective goals between the anthology dedicated to the teaching of literature and the literary textbook.

Bilingualism is a recurring feature in Franco-Ontarian writer Patrice Desbiens' work. However, Desbiens' critics generally consider his bilingualism from an angle that is more social…
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Bilingualism is a recurring feature in Franco-Ontarian writer Patrice Desbiens' work. However, Desbiens' critics generally consider his bilingualism from an angle that is more social than formal. In this thesis, we study the literary forms of Desbiens' bilingual writing. We situate this bilingualism in the broader context of Bakhtinian heteroglossia, and reflect on the relationship between bilingualism and the plurality of voices (heterophony) and of points of view (heterology) within the literary text. In the first chapter, we distinguish four forms of bilingualism, three of which are employed by Desbiens. The next three chapters are thus devoted to the study of these forms. We first look at the "heterophonic-heterological" form, in which a diversity of voices, languages and points of view are intermingled. We then analyze the "monophonic-heterological" form, which integrates two languages and two points of view within a single voice. Finally, in the fourth chapter, we observe the "monophonic-monological" form, which unites languages around a single voice and a single point of view.In our conclusion, we show that Desbiens' bilingual writing participates in both a "particularist" and a "universalist" aesthetics, and that through the combination of these aesthetics, the writer tries to find a "third way" (Lucie Hotte). In L'homme invisible/The Invisible Man, Desbiens uses the many facets of plurilingualism to problematize the notions of "knowledge" and "truth". However, this "third way," which makes particularist and universalist issues overlap, is abandoned after L'homme invisible/The Invisible Man in favour of another way. Our reading of Desbiens' collections of poems shows an increasing homogenization of plurilingualism: in the period between 1980 and 1995, heterogeneous forms dominate, but they are progressively replaced in the 2000s by a much more homogeneous form, the monophonic-monological one. While successively expressing particularistic and universalistic considerations, this form restricts the heterogeneous potential of plurilingualism: it retains from the latter only the diversity of languages, eliminating the plurality of voices and of points of view.

This dissertation deals with irony in twentieth-century Québécois literature, more specifically in the works of Jean-Aubert Loranger, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Roland Giguère, and Jacques…
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This dissertation deals with irony in twentieth-century Québécois literature, more specifically in the works of Jean-Aubert Loranger, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Roland Giguère, and Jacques Brault. Although it is clear that the patriotic imperatives of French-Canadian romanticism favoured a form of lyricism that enhanced the epic material, this dissertation aims to show that Québécois poetry also includes another romanticism, best understood through irony. The irony in question is not rhetorical; rather it derives from German romantic philosophy in the sense that it defines itself less as a figure of speech than as a mode of understanding the world through astonishment and scepticism. This double pull – toward astonishment and toward scepticism – is precisely what the poems of Loranger, Saint-Denys Garneau, Giguère, and Brault explore. In accordance with the Greek etymon eîron (the one who questions), the irony they use questions obvious facts and established values, starting with those related to poetry itself. By adopting a self-reflexive position and by turning to other forms like the tale and the fable, both subject to playfulness, humour and levity, the writers always keep a distance from poetry. But poetry is not the sole target of their irony. It also aims at reality and the clichés that make reality artificial. It is, in addition, directed at the poet himself and the poetic “I”, both perceived as suspicious constructions. Nevertheless, their irony subtly displays a certain tenderness towards what it derides. Thus, its detachment does not give way to any feeling of disgust or bitterness.This dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first one intends, in an introductory way, to reread romanticism by focusing on the critical spirit of poetry, which takes the form of a metaphysical irony. This specific type of irony is what is closely examined in the next four chapters, dedicated respectively to the works of Loranger, Garneau, Giguère, and Brault. Such a chronological structure highlights the overall coherence of the corpus; it also sheds light on a spirit of levity and an ethics of distance that play a decisive role in the Québécois poetic modernity.

► My first chapter, "Four Frames for a Portrait of a Patient Wife," looks at Marguerite de Navarre as part of the broad historical community of…
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▼ My first chapter, "Four Frames for a Portrait of a Patient Wife," looks at Marguerite de Navarre as part of the broad historical community of European framed short fiction writers, comparing her work to that of Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca, and Geoffrey Chaucer. While no Heptaméron character goes by the name of "Griselda," this famous heroine - or her closest analogs - turn out to leave peculiar traces in the frame-structure of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales as well as the Heptaméron. Extreme examples of female submission to male authority like Griselda's serve to expose fissures in patriarchal ideology, although different framed-novella writers are more or less prepared to face the implications of those aporia. While previous studies have analyzed the Cent nouvelles nouvelles as an example of iconographic and hyperbolic male homosocial domination, my second chapter shows that the Heptaméron's recycling of the earlier book's "Katherine/Conrard" as "Rolandine" illustrates a process by which the invisible male storytellers of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles become the male chauvinist devisants of the Heptaméron, while iconographic transformations in Cent nouvelles nouvelles 26 find their textual descendants in Heptaméron 21's intergeneric transformations. My third chapter addresses the Heptaméron's attempts to answer the arguments of the all-male preaching communities that the historical Marguerite de Navarre could favor or counter at court but never directly debate. In taking up some of the themes of preachers like Aimé Meigret (an early reformer imprisoned for heresy whose sole surviving sermon was probably printed at Marguerite's behest) and François Le Picart (a steadfast opponent of the Reformation who was imprisoned for branding Marguerite and her husband Henri de Navarre), the Heptaméron's frame-characters chart an alternative predicant path. Their preaching activities, in which men and women take equal part, are an example of fiction literature leading the history of ideas. Marguerite employed dozens of preachers during her lifetime, but only in the imaginary storytelling world she created could women like herself fully assert their views on theological issues, pointing towards a more open and honest Christian community freed from the male monopoly on preaching.
Advisors/Committee Members: Long, Kathleen Perry (committeeMember), Vallois, Marie-Claire (committeeMember), Ferguson, R. Gary (committeeMember).

The translation into Scots of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs under the title The Guid Sisters by translators Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman, met with great…
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The translation into Scots of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs under the title The Guid Sisters by translators Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman, met with great critical success on both sides of the Atlantic; it was moreover considered an achievement in translation studies. It was followed by the translation into « joual » of the stage adaptation of the Scottish novel Trainspotting by Martin Bowman and Wajdi Mouawad, which was also a success. This thesis demonstrates that the obvious ethnocentrism of these translations does not contradict the decentering theories popular in translation studies. The sociopolitical and linguistic similarities between the Québécois and the Scottish people, together with their differences, allow for a bilateral translational exchange that stimulates dialogue between these minority cultures, intrinsically decentered with respect to the dominating French and English cultures. Findlay and Bowman have further contributed to this dialogue by openly discussing their translation strategies in many articles and, in this way, have actively participated in foregrounding the role of translators as co-authors of translated texts.

Unlike researchers in the United States and France, researchers in Quebec have demonstrated little interest in examining the experience of aging as represented in literature.…
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Unlike researchers in the United States and France, researchers in Quebec have demonstrated little interest in examining the experience of aging as represented in literature. This thesis proposes to explore the concept of aging as depicted in Quebecois literature. With the rise in life expectancy, aging now consists of three stages, i.e., midlife, the third age and the fourth age. As demonstrated in the works of the authors examined, each stage is characterized by specific features and challenges. Midlife is seen as a transition, the passage by which one journeys from youth to age. The subject looks in the mirror and is forced to confront an image that is growing old, the confirmation that time is passing. As such, he or she has the disturbing experience of living on borrowed time while waiting for the calamity of old age to happen, followed by the inevitable. Then, one day terror strikes. The subject looks in the mirror, and the image reflected is noneother than that of an old man or woman. Denial is no longer possible. Though some eventually resign themselves to having grown old, others cannot accept this fate, but all look for consolation. The reality is grim, from every point of view. Over time, age takes a greater toll  it becomes a humiliating defeat. At the end, the subject must find a way out, an escape at all costs. Death, for so long feared, becomes not only a fundamental right, but the only hope for freedom.

This is a review of the complete works of Pierre Vadeboncoeur (1920-2010), which yield insight into marks of the past. While we disagree with the…
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This is a review of the complete works of Pierre Vadeboncoeur (1920-2010), which yield insight into marks of the past. While we disagree with the idea that the essayist was simply driven from the Moderns to the Ancients in the 1970's, we want to delve deeper into past relationships and complex networks in order to systematically provide an educated response. Indeed, Vadeboncoeur's writings show these relationships were in existence as early as the 1940's. We refuse to consider the return of the past like an exit of the Modernity: in fact, in the 1950's, it was necessary to a modern shift. The past has always been firmly entrenched in the present and future. The marks of the past in the writings of the essayist strongly amplify the culture and the persona, allotting time and space necessary for their full development. The relationship between past, present and future is at the core of the dialectical relationship (between tradition and modernization, between the stability and the movement, between peasants and explorers) that the ambivalent essayist tries to resolve in the 1970's. From that time on, he is fully conscious of those relationships and often goes back in different pasts: he is discovering the greatness of the Middle Ages, but also the Great Darkness of French Canada; he is also exploring childhood and art themes in his works; he is finally looking for his own past, until the 1930's, from Jacques Maritain to Lionel Groulx and François Hertel. This thesis is divided into four (4) chapters: the first chapter includes the past accounts of French Canadian artists and intellectuals in the early 1960's. The second includes a look at the marks of the universal past in the works of Pierre Vadeboncoeur. The third covers the marks of the French canadian past in the same publications. Finally the fourth chapter delves into the presence of the art and childhood themes.

This thesis offers a comparative reading of the short story « Les Vacances » and the novel The Cashier, written by Gabrielle Roy – the…
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This thesis offers a comparative reading of the short story « Les Vacances » and the novel The Cashier, written by Gabrielle Roy – the short story being the genesis of the novel. The subject is the main character of the two texts: Alexandre Chenevert. The first chapter draws up the chronology of the two variants of « Les Vacances », with the tools of critical edition and genetic criticism and then compares both texts, showing the existence, in Roy's mind, of a character « chenevertien »: a physically weak hero, fearing diseases and lack of money, living in alienating urban settings. The second chapter demonstrates how Roy complements her character by giving him a conscience – and space to communicate it to the reader – in The Cashier. The third chapter presents how Roy offsets, with Alexandre's conscience and perspective, a concrete and symbolic imprisonment in his life and story, then liberates him by offering him a novelistic fate.

The first part of this thesis will trace the evolution of autofiction. It uses Philippe Lejeune's concept of autobiography to analyse the inception of autofiction,…
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The first part of this thesis will trace the evolution of autofiction. It uses Philippe Lejeune's concept of autobiography to analyse the inception of autofiction, a neologism first introduced by Serge Doubrovsky. Autofiction will then be discussed with specific references to Marie Darrieussecq's and Philippe Forest's theorization. We will also observe how it manifests itself in these authors' literary works: Doubrovsky's Fils, Darrieussecq's Le bébé and Forest's L'Enfant éternel. This approach will allow us to explore the way in which various definitions of autofiction are revealed both by these authors' literary work and by their theorization.

The second part is a story in which each chapter is devoted to a different character's travels. These characters are bound together by a painful event which they are trying to deal with by leaving their hometown. The themes addressed are voluntary exile, love, deception and disappointment, with a focus on the importance of travelling as a rite of passage for youths.

► Most frequently enunciated as a questioning the notion of identity appears only when an interrogation such as "Who am I?" becomes even conceivable. Thus any…
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▼ Most frequently enunciated as a questioning the notion of identity appears only when an interrogation such as "Who am I?" becomes even conceivable. Thus any reflection on the issue of identity involves an inquiry into the conditions of emergence of this questioning. Considered in the multi-faceted Palestinian context, this concept is particularly complex because of its political ramifications and its national and collective dimensions. Facing the Zionist project that claimed Palestine (supposedly a land without people) as the land of return for the Jews (a people without a land), the Palestinians had to face a denial of their existence that is rare in modern history. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 (the Nakba for the Palestinians), expelled more than 700.000 Palestinians in the neighboring Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, transforming them into refugees who also had to face the societies of their host countries. This situation sharpened the Palestinians' conception of national identity and their awareness as a people even in the absence of an official state. The books by Elias Sanbar and Racha Salah that this dissertation examines share not only a historical background but a vision of a distinct Palestinian identity in which, I contend, collective memory and lieux de mémoire (Pierre Nora) play a crucial role. Yet in many ways these works are also strikingly different. The main objective of this dissertation is to study their respective representation of the Palestinian struggle to preserve and consolidate a particular identity as well as demonstrate how the particular literary forms they use are integral to the struggle they depict. Chapter I sets the historical and socio-political framework: Going back to the period when the fall of the Ottoman Empire was followed by the British mandate on Palestine, it analyzes the ways in which Palestinian nationalism developed in contending with both the British colonization and the Zionist ambition of establishing a Jewish national homeland. Chapter II considers several 20th-century theories on nationalism (by Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith, among others) to assess the light that they help shed on the "Palestinian question" and its specificity. Chapter III first investigates the three historical periods whereby Elias Sanbar (a celebrated, second-generation Palestinian who lived mostly in exile in Europe) constructs the Palestinian identity in his socio-political essay entitled Figures du Palestinien. Identité des origines, identité de devenir; the second part of this chapter shows how Le bien des absents, in resorting to the different mode of biography (unusual in Sanbar's production) and a nonlinear narrative mode, builds upon various "sites of memory" and cultural artifacts to shape its representations of Palestinian identity. Chapter IV is devoted to Racha Salah's L'an prochain à Tibériade. Lettres d'une jeune palestinienne du Liban. It examines the situation of refugee camps and more specifically Salah’s…
Advisors/Committee Members: Bourget, Carine (advisor), Bourget, Carine (committeemember), Leibacher, Lise (committeemember), Clancy-Smith, Julia (committeemember).

► This dissertation examines the fiction of contemporary Acadian writer France Daigle and proposes a new critical approach to her latest novel, Pour sûr, which was…
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▼ This dissertation examines the fiction of contemporary Acadian writer France Daigle and proposes a new critical approach to her latest novel, Pour sûr, which was published in 2011. Pour sûr is a 747 page polyphonic, hypertext novel written in fragments that are organized into 144 categories of 12 fragments each. The novel is notable for its metafictional, encyclopedic qualities but also for its skillful and expansive use of Chiac, the most recent iteration of Acadian French that is spoken in the Moncton/Dieppe region of New Brunswick, Canada. Chapter 1 follows the trajectory of Daigle’s relationship to this language over the span of her thirty-year writing career. My analysis shows how her continued ambivalence toward Chiac is a source of a major transformation that occurs in Pour sûr, in which Chiac becomes a legible mode of representation that makes Daigle’s creative goals possible. In chapter 2, the unusual and creative form and structure of Daigle’s novels are analyzed, along with the evolution of several aspects of her work, including metafictional, structural, and thematic elements that are present in multiple texts. I identify the innovations that make Pour sûr so different from the earlier novels and propose a closer analysis of its game-like qualities in particular. Pour sûr engages its readers and critics by requiring a high level of participation, which transforms their approach to the text. Thus, in chapter 3, I explore the ways in which this novel can be conceived of as a kind of game, and the ways in which these game-playing aspects of the text motivate readers to continue reading and re-reading it, with different experiences and interpretations each time. Here a lusory critical approach is proposed, which is informed by both reader-response criticism and more recent work in the field of game studies. Finally, I argue that Daigle, by creating a kind of hyperreality (as conceived by theorists like Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco), ultimately aims to shape the horizon of expectations of her reading public.
Advisors/Committee Members: Cazenave, Odile (advisor), Row, Jennifer (advisor).